


Night Watch

by EvilMuffins



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-02-24 07:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13209090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilMuffins/pseuds/EvilMuffins
Summary: He’d killed people, for Mila’s-sake. Anyone would have nightmares, but Python had never been one for over-sharing, a task which had always been best left to Forsyth.--Python and sleepless nights.





	Night Watch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SaraJaye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaraJaye/gifts).



> I did not go into this game expecting Python to be the most relatable character in the franchise, yet here we are.

“Where do they get all that damned energy from?” Python groaned into his third mug of coffee, the very same one that had prompted Silque to ask him if he wouldn’t rather have it in a soup bowl instead, as she took note of the dark rings underneath his eyes. She then, more helpfully, asked if he’d like for her to stir up a sleeping potion, which he had also refused.

 _Getting_ to sleep wasn’t the problem.

Faye’s sudden shout from the other end of the table jolted through Python’s nerves, coffee splashing up from the mug onto his face.

“They’re just kids,” Forsyth reminded him with a chuckle. “You were their age too once.”

“No I wasn’t…” Python grumbled into his sleeve, wiping it across his chin.

“You most certainly were. I know; I was there,” Forsyth said, guiding Python’s arm away from his face in order to dab at it with a napkin instead. “Remember?”

“What’s all the damn ruckus about anyway?” Python had half a mind to pick up his plate and eat breakfast in their tent instead, if it weren’t for the fact that Alm had insisted the entire Deliverance eat together each morning in order to boost morale, although he did wonder if anyone other than Forsyth would actually notice his absence.

Forsyth shrugged. “Faye thinks that the boys are relying on Silque too much, to the point where they’re getting reckless in battle.”

“Is that all?” Python buried his face in his hands. Maybe if he couldn’t see Gray,  he would just disappear, along with his yelling.

“Hey, Py, have you been sleeping alright?” Forsyth asked. _Took you long enough to notice,_ Python thought. “Is it my fault? I haven’t been keeping you up all night, have I?”

Python prayed to every god he could think of that as loud as Forsyth was, the younger soldiers might still have been too wrapped up in their own squabbling to have heard him.

Python had never been a particularly lucky man.

“What’s this?” Gray smirked, having picked that exact moment to grow tired of his argument with Faye. “Wasting the army’s precious time on _lewd activities?”_

“’Lewd activities’?” Tobin repeated, gesturing vaguely across the table with his fork. “What are you? Like, forty?”

“Or Lukas,” Kliff commented in his usual deadpan. Out of the entire brat brigade, Python often found Kliff the more tolerable of the bunch, altough he would never say it out loud.

“It’s not like that,” Python insisted.

It was, in fact, very much like that.

Their narrow cots, while easy to pack up (not that anything would stop Python from griping about how often he was made to do it), hardly allowed enough room for two people to roll around on for any longer than it took to get the job done. Unfortunately, as much as Python enjoyed unwinding with his boyfriend before bed, they had no choice but to retire to their respective cots afterward.

Python knew that they could probably just push the cots together, but he also knew it wouldn’t be fair to Forsyth to stick him next to someone who would toss and turn all night.

As boisterous as Forsyth could sometimes be, he was as still as a Flotstym day in his sleep. How he could ever look so serene in the middle of a war- brows unfettered set above gently fluttering lashes, lips parted wordlessly as if they had run out of conversation for once- Python would never know. Forsyth wasn’t foolish (okay, maybe he was, for lacking the sense to avoid falling in love with someone like Python), but bravery could often times be mistaken for such.

* * *

 

Things had to have been getting bad if he was actually beginning to _look forward_ to night watch duty, Python realised, chuckling wryly at the irony. Anything was better than sleeping at this point, including getting mosquito bitten while sitting atop an orange crate, with nothing but the chirp of late Avistym crickets for company. “Ya don’t say…” he muttered to a particularly verbose one that couldn’t have been more than inches away.

“Say what?” Forsyth asked, emerging from between tents. Python hadn’t even heard him coming. Some guard he made. Maybe that was why Alm hardly ever offered him the job.

“Just talkin’ to myself,” Python sighed. He hadn’t realised how cool the night had grown until Forsyth settled down beside him on the edge of the crate, contact with another warm body sending a shiver running through him. “What are you doing up?”

“Worrying about you.” There was that look again, the same one that Forsyth had worn when Python had fallen out of a tree and broken his arm when they were eight, the very same as the time he had gotten himself hit with a stray arrow to the shoulder a couple of weeks ago.

“Oh?” Python said, tilting his head back to study the sea of stars instead. It was too late for this crap. “Ya think ya got some kinda monopoly on worries?” Although he regretted his words immediately, they had been on his mind since before they had even enlisted, and certainly before they had ever officially become far more than friends.

Python was only going to hold Forsyth back. He was lazy, had a personality that may as well have been lovingly crafted from wyvern dung, and he managed to consistently do things that made Forsyth worry for him. He knew that his following Forsyth into the army was only going to be a detriment to his performance, but Python was also selfish, just to top it all off. He hadn’t been able to bear the thought of being left behind by the man he loved, and now here he was, near-delirious with sleep deprivation in the middle of a war, and dragging his boyfriend into it with him. Maybe the arrow should have taken him, maybe Silque and Kliff shouldn’t have found him in time. Would it really have mattered?

Maybe he should’ve cracked his head falling from that Mila-damned tree after rescuing Forsyth’s kite, and then he wouldn’t be so freaking _tired_ right now.

“I’m sorry, Py, but you can’t ask me not to worry for you when it’s my fault that you’re here in the first place.”

“I’ve told you a thousand times,” Python said, rising from the crate. As exhausted as he was, sitting still suddenly seemed unbearable for once, “it’s not your damn fault. Look, I’ve been having nightmares, alright? I get to sleep just fine and dandy, only to jolt awake two hours later. ”

He knew that it was nothing to embarrassed about. He’d _killed people,_ for Mila’s-sake. Anyone would have nightmares, but Python had never been one for over-sharing, a task which had always been best left to Forsyth.

“What about?” Forsyth asked quietly. No longer clad in heavy armor, and from his place seated on the low crate, he looked startlingly small to Python then, for a fleeting moment, he was still that kid next door from back in the village.

“Coming home to see our village burnt to the ground…" Python replied matter-of-factly, "The entire Deliverance lying in a pool of blood… me, dying and leaving you alone with no one to fuss over.”

“Oh.” Forsyth grew quiet for a time, and Python, for one surreal moment in his sleepless mind, thought that was the end of it.

Then, somehow, all in one motion Forsyth had stood, gathering Python into his arms, pressing a clumsy kiss to his forehead.

“I love you too much to let any of that happen. That’s why we’re fighting, so that none of that ever happens, you fool.”

When he spoke like that, all foolhardy confidence right into Python’s ear, it was almost easy to believe him.

“You’re an idiot,” Python replied, however uncertain if the words had been lost in the fabric of Forsyth’s nightshirt, or if he had even spoken aloud at all.

“Now get some sleep while I take over watch,” Forsyth insisted as they parted, settling himself onto the ground, before making a patting motion at his lap.

Python rolled his eyes, although he knew the gesture would be wasted in the dark. It was too tempting of an offer to refuse, however, and soon his head rested comfortably on Forsyth’s thighs as he drifted into a dreamless sleep.

 

 

 


End file.
